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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26049415">In a Flash</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/elusive_eventuality/pseuds/elusive_eventuality'>elusive_eventuality</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Lost Time [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, F/M, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Near Death Experiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:53:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,919</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26049415</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/elusive_eventuality/pseuds/elusive_eventuality</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Savannah should have seen it coming. Or heard it at the very least — that rhythmic, shrill beeping. Mac wasn’t at her back this time, and Deacon wasn’t in the shadows. There was no aerial support, no cover from a ledge, no shimmer of a stealth-boy — just her and Danse on the ground, caught in the throes of what seemed like an endless wave of mutants.</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>OR</p>
<p>A near-death experience might be the final push Danse needs.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Paladin Danse/Female Sole Survivor, Paladin Danse/Sole Survivor (Fallout)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Lost Time [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1881085</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>46</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>In a Flash</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This isn't a direct sequel necessarily to 'Bound By Honour' but it does establish more of the relationship between Danse and Savannah for (hopefully) the next instalments I'll get around to writing. </p>
<p>Thank you all so, so much for the feedback on my last piece, it means so much to me &lt;3</p>
<p>(As always, this is un-beta'd so I'm sorry for any mistakes that may be present.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">Savannah should have seen it coming. Or heard it at the very least — that rhythmic, shrill beeping. In the first few months, she could hear it over anything, had trained her ears to listen for it every time she saw so much as saw a damn flash of green. Then she’d travelled with Mac and had grown frighteningly accustomed to having him watching her six, and later it was Deacon at her side, a stealth-boy ready should he need it. But Mac wasn’t at her back this time, and Deacon wasn’t in the shadows. There was no aerial support, no cover from a ledge, no shimmer of a stealth-boy — just her and Danse on the ground, caught in the throes of what seemed like an endless wave of mutants.</p>
<p class="p1">She’d riddled at least a dozen of them with enough bullets to sink a small boat but she could already see more emerging from the building until the door was foaming with bloated, green bodies, yelling and snarling and breathless in their bloodlust. For once she regretted not wearing her power armour, thought distractedly back to where she’d left it, stashed safely in Home Plate. Her combat armour suddenly felt much too flimsy, too…<em>breakable</em>, like one wrong hit and the whole thing would snap.</p>
<p class="p1">She deflected a blow with her bracer and considered calling for a retreat. Hightailing it out of this area while they still could seemed preferable to the looming alternative.</p>
<p class="p1">But then Danse yelled her name — barely audible over the sound of gunfire and the sound of the mutants screaming — and Savannah turned abruptly, saw the telltale blinking red light approaching rapidly through the haze of gunpowder. She froze for a stilted breath, felt her pulse hammering in her chest, beating for all the world like the time she’d accidentally taken a dose of psycho. When her brain caught up, unfroze and sharpened the world back into a burst of colour she reached for her belt, aborted the motion half-way through. There wasn’t time for her to put down the mutants swarming around her and unclip a frag grenade from her waist.</p>
<p class="p1">It was too close now, anyway. They’d have to kill it before it reached them. <em>Damn</em>. Headshots never had been her area of expertise. She’d seen Mac put down suiciders in a heartbeat with a well-placed bullet between their eyes. Hell, she’d been so impressed the first time he did it that she’d given him the damn mini nuke as a present. He still had it, propped by his bed back at Home Plate. It was damned safety hazard is what it was and she’d caught Deacon trying to smuggle it out more than once. God, she wished they were here.</p>
<p class="p1">She reloaded her gun and rammed a hound with the muzzle before it could bite her thigh — she didn’t need reminding how <em>that</em> felt. A laser vaporised it a second later, turned it to ash at her feet. It clung to her bloodied trousers, mottled the red with specks of grey.</p>
<p class="p1">“Go!” Danse shouted, straining to be heard over the uproar and Savannah unloaded a round of bullets into the brute’s chest, kicked it out of her way as it fell, busted the toes on her right foot in the process. <em>Fuck.</em></p>
<p class="p1">“I’m not leaving you!” She yelled back, dragged the sleeve of her shirt across her brow, grimaced when it came back smeared in red. The damn mutant had landed a blow when they’d first approached the hospital, clocked her over the head with a board. A nail had caught her forehead, tore open the skin across her brow. It hadn’t stopped bleeding since and there’d been no time for a stimpak. She caught Danse eyeing her out the corner of his eye, lips pressed tightly and she could see his facade slipping, falling further and further down his face the more mutants swarmed her. Still, it wasn’t like he could help. He was caught fighting seven-to-one as it was.</p>
<p class="p1">She looked towards the mouth of the building and grimaced.</p>
<p class="p1">How were there still more? She could scarcely see the floor through the mess of entrails and green, leathery skin. The red light bounced off the scaffolding around them — cast long, staccato shadows up the brick wall, morphed the mutants’ faces into something even more awful; gnarled and twisted, clad only in skin that looked more grey than green, pallid and half-dead. Fear thrummed in her chest, burned through her veins.</p>
<p class="p1">Danse’s rifle fired behind her with a whine. She heard a super mutant hit the ground a second later, landing so heavily the tarmac beneath her feet shook with the reverberations. “That’s an order, knight!”</p>
<p class="p1">She was closer than Danse was. Not by much — ten feet at most. But she had time. Three seconds, maybe. It was enough. It had to be. If she could down it, put a bullet in its skull then she’d be fine. <em>Danse</em> would be fine. And if she didn’t, if she missed, then the blast would hit her first, give Danse time to run, to get to shelter. His power armour would protect him from that distance. Hopefully. She looked over her shoulder, took as long as she dared to take in his form, commit the shape of him to memory, his face bathed in a red glow every time his weapon fired, scowling and determined. God, he was beautiful. Statuesque, almost, in the gloaming. All carved lines and righteous fury.</p>
<p class="p1">He caught her eye and she did her best to smile, hoped to whatever fucking god was up there that he understood, that she conveyed what she needed to. Deacon always had said she was terrible at her hiding her emotions, that they were written across her face if you knew how to look. She hoped Danse did, that they were scrawled in the grime and sweat and blood, a confession of all the words she hadn’t gotten to say.</p>
<p class="p1">He understood. He must have done. She could see it in the way his hands faltered, the widening of his eyes. His next shot missed, flew overhead at the building behind the mutant.</p>
<p class="p1">He screamed her name, raw and pained and Savannah forced herself to turn away from him, hands shaking as she took aim. Mac’s voice rang clear in her head and she listened, guided the barrel until she could see its head. The red light throbbed angrily, pulsed mockingly in time with her heart. One damned chance. She exhaled, squeezed the trigger and closed her eyes. Emptied the whole damn clip without breathing.</p>
<p class="p1">There was nothing for a moment, then:</p>
<p class="p1">“Get down!” Danse roared and Savannah did, dropped without thinking. Hit the wet concrete so fast she winded herself, scraped the skin from her chin on the grit. She heard Danse skid to a halt in front of her, the metal of his armour screeching across the road. He pulled her up to him, tucked her body against the front of his armour and Savannah barely had time to hold on before the world shook. Her teeth rattled, hands locked around the bars of his armour, gripping so tightly she was sure her fingers had frozen in place. The heat was almost unbearable, seeping in from around him like a furnace, stole the breath from her throat and scorched the exposed skin on her arms. She gritted her teeth against the pain until the blast died down, dropped to a gust instead of a gale and the ticking on her pip-boy quieted.</p>
<p class="p1">Silence. That painful, <em>loud</em> silence. Nothing but the ringing in her ears and a metallic tang in her mouth. Her limbs vibrated from the aftershocks, a dull, buzzing feeling spreading from her fingers to her shins. An ache spread across her hands, still locked around bars that were quickly becoming just as hot as the initial blast had been. She dropped them with a hiss, uncurled her fingers and grimaced at the stiffness in them. When she’d checked her limbs were all intact and nudged her tongue gingerly against her teeth the anger began to set in — that same jagged bite of fear that she’d felt when Danse had first skidded to a halt in front of her.</p>
<p class="p1">“You better be alive or so help me God.” The world tipped slightly as she scrambled to her knees, placed a boot on the ground and tugged herself up until Danse’s face came into view. Singed and blackened with ash from the blast but <em>alive</em>. Adrenaline made her hands shake as she ran them through his hair, cradled the back of his head to check for injuries, for blood, for anything. “You’re not even wearing your helmet! Do you know how unbelievably <em>stupid</em> that was? You were supposed to run! That was a mini-nuke, Danse, a—“</p>
<p class="p1">The rest of the words died on her tongue, wilted in shock. Bloomed again in tentative surprise, in the rough drag of his lips against hers, desperate with relief. Pressed her so tightly against him that she was sure his armour was digging dents into her chest plate, or at the very least scratching the paintwork. They were both filthy, smeared with dirt and blood and soot and her arms were starting to blister properly now, burned from the heat of the blast but Danse was <em>alive</em>, in front of her, kissing her like she’d disappear if he dared to stop. She wasn’t sure she was even supporting herself anymore, felt for all the world like she was floating, grounded only by the strength of his grasp on her ribs as her hands scrabbled for purchase across the back of his neck, tangled into his hair.</p>
<p class="p1">It was an awkward angle. Grit and debris were starting to dig painfully into her knee, and a crick was steadily forming in her neck but she couldn’t even fathom stopping, just whined against his mouth and ran her hands down his armour, hating the barrier between them, the expanse of impersonal steel.</p>
<p class="p1">When Danse finally pulled back her head spun, vision swimming from a heady combination of adrenaline and shock. He didn’t give her the chance to speak before he clambered to his feet, rising unsteadily in the armour and Savannah could see the damage clearly now; the dents in the leg pieces, blown open in places to expose the bare chassis and a flash of orange. The armour opened a second later with a hiss, metal separating smoothly. She was yanked from the ground and pressed against Danse’s body before she could blink — his hands cradling her face, roving over her shoulders, down her arms, across her torso.</p>
<p class="p1">“Oh gods, Savannah,” he choked and Savannah grabbed his hands, hushed him gently. It took her a minute to notice his hitched breaths, the dampness gathered behind his eyes.</p>
<p class="p1">“I’m okay,” she said, winded, “I’m okay.”</p>
<p class="p1">His hands shook in her grasp, trembled so violently her own arms ached with the effort it took to hold them steady.</p>
<p class="p1">“What were you thinking?!” He snapped, breaking free of her hold to cup her cheek, knock his brow against hers. “I told you to go, Savannah. I gave you an <em>order.</em> You could have—“ He stopped and squeezed his eyes shut, his fingers digging almost painfully into her skin.</p>
<p class="p1">“Danse, look at me, please,” she murmured, ran a hand through his hair until he opened his eyes again —rested his gaze on her face, lingered on the cut on her forehead, still bleeding sluggishly down the side of her nose, gathering at her chin. “I’m here. I promise. I’m okay, I’m—”</p>
<p class="p1">Danse cut her off, surged forward and kissed her again — soundly, desperately, all knocked teeth and bruised lips. There was no finesse to it, nothing but sheer need, as if he was torn between primal fear and hopeful relief. She slowed the pace as much as she was able, ran her fingers across his jaw, buried them in his hair, until the glide of their lips was more of a slow drag than a frantic scrabble. She swiped her tongue against his bottom lip and tasted salt. Faltered, for a moment. Was he—?</p>
<p class="p1">“Don’t <em>ever</em> do that to me again, Savannah,” he panted as she pulled back — just enough to drag her thumb under his eye, gathered the wetness before it could spill further. “I’m not losing you to those <em>things.</em> Not now, not ever.” For a minute she didn’t recognise his voice. All anger and hard, sharpened lines. More the jagged bite of a blade than his usual softness. It was the angriest she could recall ever hearing him. Or maybe anger wasn’t the right word, but something closer to pain, to resentment. An old wound flaring hotly beneath the surface, bleeding sluggishly.</p>
<p class="p1">She ran her fingers down his brow, soothed the outline of the scar there as if she could fade it, sap the ache from it like sucking venom from a bite.</p>
<p class="p1">He keened, high in his throat and held her tighter. “I can’t lose you, Anna. Not you. Gods, not <em>you</em>.”</p>
<p class="p1">“You’ve got me,” she whispered, curled her arms around his shoulders and tugged his head down against her, shivered when his breath ghosted across her neck, warm and damp. He mouthed something against her skin, a soundless chant, lips dragging against the sensitive flesh, stubble catching roughly. She couldn’t even begin to understand what he was saying, just held him fast until the tension leached from his shoulders, until his fingers loosened their grip on her ribs, a firm hold more than a bruise.</p>
<p class="p1">She took the time to survey the scene, glanced over Danse’s shoulder, saw the burning pile of green flesh, a mess of limbs. She could still the suicider’s body, though. The chain wrapped around its chest. It had managed to take the rest of the mutants out in the blast, scattered blood and gore across the ground, plastered up the walls. She had missed then. Or it had dropped it on its way down.</p>
<p class="p1">Danse shifted in her arms, drew back. A stray ray of light caught his hair, torched the strands a burnt sienna. For a moment, a brief, fragile, moment, Savannah could ignore the carnage around them, could watch it melt away into the last rays of daylight and imagine, fleetingly, that the bombs had never dropped. That she still had a house to go back to, a son in his crib, a car and friends and <em>television</em> and—</p>
<p class="p1">And Danse. Like they were just any normal couple walking around the plaza in the evening. That the only danger was the threat of a mugger, the pollution in the air, the cars rumbling down the roads. But then the breeze blew in, carried the scent of rot and garbage that never seemed to leave, the acrid scent of singed flesh and hair and the illusion shattered, fragmented before her eyes.</p>
<p class="p1">All of it except Danse, looking at her with wet eyes, gleaming golden in this light.</p>
<p class="p1">She loved him. God help her she did. Loved him with all of her heart — all that was left of it, anyway. Had half-loved him from the first moment she’d seen him, bloodied and <em>determined</em>, standing straight in the line of fire — a sentinel, a tank. He’d taken multiple hits for her, a <em>stranger</em>, stood between her and the ferals as she gunned them down, kept her safe from their nails, their teeth. Realised with a daunting clarity shortly after how <em>kind</em> he was — that old-world type of kindness. The kind she thought had died along with civilisation, had gone up in a fiery blaze with the rest of her world.</p>
<p class="p1">She ached for him, sometimes, in that same way she ached for her old life. Ached for something she was sure she could never have, not fully, not all to herself. Not when he was so <em>good</em>, so kind, so gentle. Not when she was so…Well, so everything that he wasn’t when it came down to it. She had been, once. Back before the world had chewed her up and spat her back out, burned out all the mercy and branded her in the name of blood and victory and that desperate, keening grief.</p>
<p class="p1">But the way Danse was looking at her now, like she was the first thing he had ever seen, that reverent awe, that hesitant, timid relief, twisted her stomach, sparked a fire in her chest that she’d tried so hard to keep small. To squash between her palms whenever it grew too large. It grew unrestrained now, trailed across her skin like a match to gasoline.</p>
<p class="p1">“You’ve got me,” she repeated, chased the sunlight across his hair as if it could take her back into that mirage, replicate that feeling of safety, of tranquility.</p>
<p class="p1">“Yes,” Danse agreed, soft and hushed, as if he was afraid, like she was, that this was just an illusion. An intricate deception borne from the last remnants of a life — that they were, in reality, face down on the road, bleeding from wounds they weren’t even aware of. He tightened his hold, clung to her desperately. Half a second passed. A hesitation, as if he was still edging across that line — pushing at the absence of a boundary like a tongue against empty gum — before he pressed his brow into the crown of her head, stroked a palm down the back of her scalp, settled in the strands of her hair. “I do.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>As always, please consider leaving a comment or kudos if you enjoyed :)</p>
<p>(Fun fact, I wrote this with like,,,three different endings at one point and the initial plot was Very Different. I might release the other versions at some point if anyone would be interested in them.)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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